TIME AND CHANCE
more than Laura's rightful setting and background. And speech, that to others had been flat and tedious, became to them as simple as the elements, potential as springtime, miraculous as revelation.
In those days they should have blessed "Thoreau, the Man."
On the last morning, when the azure Gulf of Siam was lost in the yellow outpour at Koh-si-chang, and crossing the bar, the "Prapatom" had steamed into the river, Scarlett and the girl stood together by the rail. They were silent, looking back to where, in the liquid light of dawn, the temple of Pak-nam rose from a fairy island, like the tall white helmet of a sunken genie. Slowly the ship moved up a river of molten copper, between low banks of vivid green bush and slim areca palms. From the bosky mouth of a hidden waterway, here and there, sampans stole out,—a lithe figure
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